Sir: January heard the wailing of the residents of the Port Harcourt metropolis and its environs. As should be, media houses and social media platforms went agog with these wailings. The Nation was not left out of the frenzy as there was a publication on Sunday, January 23, to highlight the recent environmental woes of those living in the affected areas.
As a final year student sitting in Rev. Fr. Emeka Ngwoke’s class of ‘Religion and Culture in Contemporary Society’, in 2019, the erudite scholar exposed me to the malaise of pollution in Port-Harcourt city. Albeit not being a first-hand witness, the said pollution seemed innocuous; just soot on the walls, windows, air conditioners and generally in the atmosphere. It sounded far-away like listening to reports of destruction caused by a hurricane in the North American sea line.
This year started on a good footing as Governor Nyesom Wike on January 8, was reported to have ordered the arrest of illegal refinery operators within Rivers State. These operators were the scapegoats in what can be regarded as a scheme that touched every facet of the average Nigerian social circle. Consequently, they were responsible for the level of air pollution reported within the state.
The Nation’s January 23 publication revealed how ‘security operatives aid, abet oil theft’ and ‘crude oil thieves in political office’. No one needs to ask for Shola O’Neil’s sources as videos circulated the internet and social media platforms of run-ins between political appointees and office holders of the Rivers State Government and some officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) who were allegedly guarding and guiding illegal refining processes in such illegal spots. What will become of that is beyond my power but nonetheless shows the rot within the social and political sphere in the Niger Delta region and Nigeria in general.
My visit to Port-Harcourt in December 2021 made me a firsthand witness of what I heard in class two years back. I was however shocked with what I saw and heard on transit to Port Harcourt along the Owerri-Ahoada highway particularly in the Ohaji-Egbema section in Imo State. The transportation of illegally refined products was brazen. From the motor bike riders to heavy duty trucks, the place was busy. Nigerians who ply that road can testify that it has the shortest length for various security roadblocks; the space between one and the next roadblock is shy of 50 metres.
For all the wrong reasons, these roadblocks are always active and result in heavy traffic congestion in areas where sections of the highway are in bad shape. Security operatives can be seen forcibly extorting money from ‘okada’ riders heavily burdened with refined products even to the point of chasing after them.
To rot is so deep that travellers in the same vehicle with me openly name those that engage in such activities with the big gains they have made in such activities. They also reveal that security operatives, village chiefs and youths are all complicit as everyone has something to gain from the venture with some persons even saying that it has reduced poverty and incessant kidnapping in such areas.
High concrete fences are also going up in various sections of the highway to purposely conceal the activities that go on within such areas. Mother earth as is her nature exposes the perpetrators and their activities as the land could be seen to have been badly polluted from the loading and transportation of such products.
As with Charles Dickens historical novel, the oil bunkering and illegal refining of crude oil products in the two cities of Port Harcourt and Ohaji Egbema would necessitate a revolution; an environmental revolution where the natural elements will be noxious just like the air in Port Harcourt, the land in Ohaji Egbema and water bodies in other areas of the Niger Delta region.
The work to avert such nemesis lies not only in the hands of the government as Nigerians are wont to do, but also in the hands of the general citizenry to abstain from and reporting such incidents to authorities that can halt such activities.
- Eziefula, Adonai Chukwuemeka, Asaba, Delta State.